And this happens. I'm not trying to be insensitive and I obviously don't know the full story, but it's on you (as the team leader) to guide and teach her so she is more independent 3 months down the road.

Depends on her experience.

Fresh analyst straight from school....ok. Mistakes like that are annoying but not entirely unexpected.

Analyst with 3-5 years experience or more? No. That behavior is not acceptable.

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Quote:

"On a reflection of Tyranny. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. Post-truth is pre-fascism.”

I had a job like this... great pay, horrible stress, long hours, lots of working from home in the evenings. I left. I took a pay cut. I don't miss the money at all and am 1000 times happier. Oh, and I left my stock on the table. Don't care - it was just monopoly money.

But it is a question only you can answer. It's fairly typical at high powered companies that for those at higher levels that you'll be beaten up. Long hours, lots of last minute emergencies. You have to figure out which level is right for you and what's important to you. Then do that.

I decided my family and child was way more important than the extra $20K. And I was so very right.

To the OP and WhiteVeil... If I were in your shoes, I would gradually scale back my hours throughout the year to a more acceptable level (40-45 hours, for me) regardless of company culture or pressure from your boss to keep your chair warm 60 hours/wk.

If this is completely unacceptable to your employer then they will formalize your deficiencies in your performance reviews and you'll know you need to start looking for a new job. There's also a chance that they'll let you coast along at 45hrs/wk and say you're "meeting expectations" and your incentive comp will reflect your average performance.

There's no f-ing way I'm going to voluntarily put in 60 hours/week and spend my weekends away from my family because of the office culture or a workaholic boss. Life is too short and I place great value on my free time.

To the OP and WhiteVeil... If I were in your shoes, I would gradually scale back my hours throughout the year to a more acceptable level (40-45 hours, for me) regardless of company culture or pressure from your boss to keep your chair warm 60 hours/wk.

If this is completely unacceptable to your employer then they will formalize your deficiencies in your performance reviews and you'll know you need to start looking for a new job. There's also a chance that they'll let you coast along at 45hrs/wk and say you're "meeting expectations" and your incentive comp will reflect your average performance.

There's no f-ing way I'm going to voluntarily put in 60 hours/week and spend my weekends away from my family because of the office culture or a workaholic boss. Life is too short and I place great value on my free time.

I would say it also depends on professional advancement. If there is a path forward and it leads where you want to go, it makes sense to put in the effort to some degree. If there is no end in sight and no opportunity to move up, I agree on reducing hours and see where it goes.

Okay, hours for a reasonable and supportive boss is much different from putting in hours for a boss that is unreasonable and not supportive.

You can work your ass off for a jerk... and when you need it, this person will not bother supporting you.

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Spoiler:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agadefe

Physical violence as acceptable reaction or outdated masculine bravado as a positive quality is definitely not something the country should be moving towards or qualities we want to see in a President.

I have never met an experienced actuary - fellow level, above age 40 - who worked 55+ hour weeks for years and did not regret it. I have never heard an experienced actuary say that working long hours like this was ultimately beneficial for them.

I have seen do-good actuaries like this slave for the company, affecting their health and personal life, only to have the company eventually downsize them. Yes, you can work 70 hour weeks and be fired. I imagine that's a bitter pill to swallow.

I have seen actuaries divorced by their spouse due to working too many hours, not spending time with the family, missing their children's life events. One of these actuaries, through kindness of the family courts, had their child support calculated on the very high salary of the 70-hour-per-week job. Now this actuary lives alone in a small apartment, essentially trapped slowly working themself to death.

I have seen actuaries develop serious health problems and addictions, likely linked to the absurd number of hours they worked. I even knew an actuary who died from a stroke, likely due to workload-associated health problems. That company replaced this deceased actuary in less than three months.

Some of the happiest actuaries I know voluntarily work part-time, 20-30 hours per week.

* I am a career changer, and made lousy pay (and lousy financial decisions) in my younger years
* I'm 50-ish, and in a classic "middle management" position at a really big company, which pays well
* So I'm finally making a good pay where I'm making nice progress on debt, retirement planning, paying for kids' college, etc. So it's scary to go backwards in pay.
* I have a supportive boss. He's even warning higher-ups that I could leave if they don't help out my situation.
* I spend 7 hours a day in meetings, because we're working some new process that was started by somebody else, and my team has to fix. People expect us to get the work done that was originally expected of us, but we can't get to that because the data is so amazingly crappy. So that's why I spend so many hours outside of normal work hours, just trying to catch up the 100 emails that came in and I couldn't answer while in all those meetings.
* Fortunately, people are finally realizing how much of a no-win situation it is, and they're becoming more open to change.

So, there's "sort of" a light at the end of the tunnel. But I'm so ridiculously burnt out, it's hard to pump myself up for the blast of effort and energy it's going to take in the short term to fix everything that others screwed up.

Edit to add: and I live in an area that is basically low-cost Midwest. I'm sure many of you would call it the 'Po.

I'm not nearly as experienced as you, but that's been the attitude at every place I've been at. It honestly baffles me when people talk about the flexibility, 40 hr cushy jobs, and $150K+ salary. I'm really starting to think this oversaturation of the field (probably not at your level though) has just caused employers to start treating employees as if they are disposable. IME, they think valuing a work life balance is starting to mean you're lazy and not cut out for the work. To give an example, at my last job even pulling 60+ hour regular weeks, my manager stated that because I didn't regularly come in on Sundays, he doubted my commitment to my job and had no problem looking for someone else (the last part was very passive aggressive, but that was essentially the message).

EDIT: But I'm not disagreeing with other posters's points that there are better jobs out there. I certainly believe there are. Just don't know where to find them.

I understand this is difficult, and I didn't start doing this until about 5-6 years into my career, but I have and will continue to call the manager's bluff in that type of situation. You have to have a very clear idea of the value of your work to know when pulling this is appropriate.

I also agree on the saturation issue. Actuarial isn't meaningfully different in workload at the median from what I can tell, but I'm sure the average is lower since there seem to be more 20-30 hour/week types.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westley

If I know about it in advance, I can schedule constructively. Detailed work in the morning, review stuff in the afternoon, late afternoon/evening is for meetings/calls that I need to participate in but don't really need to be on top of my game. Spend the last hour of the day doing mindless tasks like managing emails that have been sitting.

"no loss in quality" is a high bar, but I think it can be minimized pretty effectively if you have some flexibility to manage it. I also think I could do this better when I was younger

This is important to consider. I did the 50-70 hour work+study weeks with 100% technical work, and that burned the hell out of me after 2-3 weeks at most. If I'm doing 60 hour weeks and there's actually a mix, I can last 6 weeks at that rate before I need a < 30 hour workweek. Unfortunately for EL people in this field, they tend to have 100% technical work.

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Who would win in a fight...Mike Ditka or a hurricane? And da hurricane's name is Ditka.

I understand this is difficult, and I didn't start doing this until about 5-6 years into my career, but I have and will continue to call the manager's bluff in that type of situation. You have to have a very clear idea of the value of your work to know when pulling this is appropriate.

I also agree on the saturation issue. Actuarial isn't meaningfully different in workload at the median from what I can tell, but I'm sure the average is lower since there seem to be more 20-30 hour/week types.

This is important to consider. I did the 50-70 hour work+study weeks with 100% technical work, and that burned the hell out of me after 2-3 weeks at most. If I'm doing 60 hour weeks and there's actually a mix, I can last 6 weeks at that rate before I need a < 30 hour workweek. Unfortunately for EL people in this field, they tend to have 100% technical work.

This is one of the reasons I am jumping. I want to move on from pure technical work. The tight labor market is helping me call my manager’s bluff.